The present invention relates to a document information management system for managing information (document information) recorded on a medium such as paper as an image file, a document information management method and a document search method.
In general, in a filing system, information recorded on a paper medium such as a slip is read by means of a scanner, etc. under control of an exclusive-use terminal apparatus (client) for the filing system, and a read image (file) is associated with a search key and registered in a filing server. A search key associated with a target image file is input through the exclusive-use terminal apparatus, and thereby the target image file can be specified from a number of image files stored in the filing server.
The search keys are, in most cases, characteristic words recorded on paper media, such as slip numbers, titles, or dates. The conventional filing system requires manual input of such search keys through keyboard operations.
Accordingly, in a case where a great number of paper media are filed in the form of image files, the operator is required to input search keys through a keyboard operation each time paper media are read by the scanner one by one or in units of a series. This is very time-consuming.
There is known an OCR (Optical Character Reader) for optically recognizing characters recorded on paper. This apparatus merely outputs characters such as slip numbers or titles recorded on slips in the form of text files, and does not have a function of systematically storing the text files in association with image files. In the prior art, in order to systematically store the text files obtained by the OCR apparatus in association with image files obtained by the scanner, an operation is required to input information representing the relationship between the text files and image files.
Either in a case of using the filing system or in a case of using the OCR apparatus, it is not possible to file image files by simple operations.